


Counting Kisses

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Holidays, Kissing, MSR, more kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:33:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7549846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully go on a journey of discovery and escalating recognition in season 7, starting with Millennium and running through Je Souhaite. The journey involves a lot of kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Anjou for believing in this story when I wasn't sure that I did.

xx One xx

The first time they kiss it is New Year's Eve. He has his arm in a sling and is careful to not touch her with his good arm because he knows that one arm would not be enough. Her arms are fine, but she is afraid that if her hands touch him while they kiss, she would crush him to her with such possessive, fervent force that his arm would take even longer to heal, and that simply would not do.

On the way out of the hospital, he puts his good arm loosely around her shoulder, which is enough to hold them both after the world didn't end.

They do not discuss the kiss later, and there is not another one for quite some time.

xx Two xx

She buys him a pink rose on Valentine's Day. Even as she's buying it she knows it's ludicrous, but she goes ahead anyway. Since Donnie Pfaster invaded her apartment and shook her foundation, she's less afraid of being a spontaneous, reckless decision-maker because it turns out that spontaneous and reckless doesn't always mean wrong.

The florist pulled a red rose from a large waiting supply at the counter when she asked for a single flower. She quickly refused and made another request. Since he's colorblind he shouldn't get red. He can see pink. And pink is friendly, pink is sweet. Pink is not burning red devotion, which she knows is what the rose may mean regardless of color, but she's fanning the flame brazenly and dangerously enough as it is.

He's not in the office when she arrives. She lays the elaborately wrapped flower on his chair. No note, no card.

When she returns to the office later that morning from the lab, he is sitting in his chair, and the rose is in a vase on the desk. She has no idea where he got a vase, but she also does not know what all is hidden in the room's drawers and on its fully-loaded shelves. She learned a long time ago that it's best not to disturb any of those things or she may find herself holding a mummified head of a "guaranteed authentic" leprechaun and hearing lengthy tall tales about stolen pots of gold while desperately overdue paperwork grows even more stale.

He doesn't mention the rose, and neither does she. It's only when he's summoned upstairs that afternoon to double check the soundness of a Violent Crimes serial killer profile that it is acknowledged.

She's standing next to the desk while reading a report because she's mindful of the adverse metabolic effects of sitting all day. As he gets up, he swiftly plucks one petal and tucks it into her palm as he walks by and brushes his lips against hers. "Thank you," he says, before leaving.

She says nothing and can't decide whether to be more aghast at his boldness of acknowledgment or at the fact that the door to the office was wide open.

He is not undecided and is firmly aghast that he didn't buy her anything at all.

xx Three xx

After the long Presidents' Day weekend in which they endured three whole days of not seeing each other, they are back at the FBI, and he cannot stop talking to her.

After covering topics including the closure of the pizza shop nearest his apartment, the continued farce of Hollywood claiming that a ghost could ever be as friendly as Casper, and the scientific bases for the increased ease of virus transmission in winter (she had to help a bit with that one), he moves onto the morning's awful traffic and observes, "Blinking yellow broken traffic lights should not exist in this day and age of technology!"

He is not wrong, but she jests, "Maybe you should call up the President. Get a Constitutional Amendment."

"And that's another thing, Scully. Presidents! George's and Abe's individual achievements and contributions to America have been mashed together into obfuscation by this holiday."

She's been sitting at his desk and watching him pace in the area between the desk and the office's front door as she's half-worked and wholly listened to his particular brand of charming nonsense, but he's now triggered a memory that diverts her attention. As he launches into a surprisingly detailed history of Washington and Lincoln, she opens the desk drawer they had some time ago tacitly agreed is hers and fumbles to a corner where she finds some mashed presidents.

She silently catches his eye and summons him over with an arm held out in front of her, hand closed with palm down, ready to drop something small into his hand. Instead of putting an open hand under hers ready to receive, he clasps her fingers from underneath and bends down as he raises her hand to his mouth. He doesn't look up as he rests his pillow-soft lips on her and moves them up and down once, twice.

His hand had gently relaxed her fingers, so as he draws away, what she had fished out of the drawer is now held by him. She has no idea where she got this fused dime and penny, but she's held onto it for over a year.

He walks away toward the door, and she curls up her hand and holds her kissed fingers against her heart for a brief moment before he turns back around.

He hadn't realized she was trying to give him something. He simply saw her arm outstretched with a hand bent like royalty, and his instinct was to treat her that way.

xx Four xx

When he comes into the office she sees that he's uncharacteristically carrying a shopping bag. Inside is a lush cream box tied with a deep red ribbon that he presents to her as soon as he hangs up his coat. It is her birthday.

He had no trouble remembering to buy her something.

She pretends to not look surprised at the tastefulness and luxury of her new plaid scarf. He pretends to not notice that she's pretending to not look surprised.

"It's lovely, Mulder."

"It was either this one or a black scarf with little green alien heads all over it."

"I assume you couldn't get yourself to buy that one, Mulder, since aliens aren't green, they're grey."

"Scully," he says, clutching his heart with mock horror like he's about to faint. "You admitting anything about aliens? And I'm not even the one with the birthday today!"

"I admit nothing!"

They stare at one another in silent détente.

Curious, but mainly not wanting today of all days to devolve into a marathon session of alien deliberations, she asks, "Why then a scarf at all?"

His eyes dart away from her, which confuses her, but she stays quiet with her eyes on him.

He wonders whether he should again be flip or should just tell her. It's her birthday, so he should tell her. He's grown to cherish the way she constantly questions everything he does and despite himself makes him a better person, so he should tell her. There's a straightforward answer, so he should tell her. He's been embarrassed in front of her countless times before, so he should tell her.

"Your hair is shorter than it's ever been and you've been cold all winter," he tells her. "And the blue of this scarf is like the color of your eyes."

It's futile to try to hide her surprise this time.

She tips her head slightly and looks at him for a moment. Then she tosses the scarf around his neck like a lasso. She's holding one end of the scarf in each of her hands and easily pulls his head down toward her.

He ceases being able to compare the blue of the scarf to the blue of her eyes because both of their eyes close as their lips touch.

Her hands continue holding the scarf. His hands, however, are on her hips and softly knead there in rhythm with the gentle movement of their mouths. This is not like the New Year's kiss.

Neither one of them is sure how the kiss stops. They just one moment find themselves breathing deeply with foreheads resting against one other. 

She whispers, "The world still didn't end."

"Yes," he agrees.

While she carefully folds the scarf into her bag to take home, he ties the gift box's red ribbon around the stem of the desk lamp, where it stays burning with devotion for weeks.

xx Five xx

It's first thing in the morning, and he is procrastinating.

"The thing they don't tell you about snakebites, Scully, is that as they heal the fang punctures burn, like I’m being bitten again, over and over."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"I'm out of the hospital, but do you think I can still use snake-inflicted damage as an excuse to not finish this report about Reverend Mackey and his snakes anytime soon?"

"Negative."

He keeps talking, and she's listening to him, but her eyes are wandering and she's slowly shuffling in front of the back room's shelving. Is this why he so often plops her down in front of a slideshow?

A little dark wrinkled ball that kind of looks like a mutant raisin catches her eye. She picks it up from the shelf, holds it out in front of her face, wiggles it around toward him, and interrupts him with, "Kiss me, I'm Irish!"

"What?"

She shakes the little ball around a bit more at him, widening her eyes as if to say, "Come on, don't you get it?"

He does not get it.

Resigned, she sighs. "The leprechaun head? Irish? St. Patrick's Day?" She's still wiggling the head (the _alleged_ head) around but her hand is drooping down and moving slower as she feels the embarrassment of her silly, random, rude action.

"Oh right, the holiday today," he says with no registered emotion. "Aren't you Irish, Scully?"

"What makes you say that?" Just because she has fair skin and red hair, everybody always says that.

He responds by reaching past her still-dangling arm to point at her hair. He's a strange man, but sometimes he's just as predictable as everyone else. She's about to mockingly tell him so when he decidedly does not act like anyone else has for a very long time, or even like the him that she would traditionally recognize, and hooks a strand of her hair with his outstretched finger and twirls it around as he drops one kiss, two kisses, three kisses, more, around the soft expanse of her cheek.

"Wuh...What are you doing, Mulder?"

"If you don't know, I'm doing it wrong." He speaks so closely to her face that his breath tickles her nose.

"Is this because you think I'm Irish?"

"I'm not kissing that leprechaun head, Scully."

"It's not really a leprechaun head."

He pulls back, but his hand is still in her hair. "I thought we agreed to disagree about that."

"Mmm-hmmm. But maybe today," she says as she reaches up toward his head as if she's going to return the hair fondling favor, "I can believe in leprechauns."

His face brightens in excited light, and his lips start to bend into a smile but not before her mouth curls into a wicked grin. Her fingers don't reach his hair and instead pinch his shoulder.

"Hey! Ow! Aren't I already injured enough, Scully?"

"Didn't you know that leprechauns can't see green and that they pinch anyone they can see? You got pinched. That'll teach you about not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day."

"Oh so now you're a leprechaun? I guess you are little enough," he observes as his eyes scan the length of her body from top to bottom and back up.

She had asked, but she thinks she already knows why he kissed her. A holiday is a reason, an excuse, a special occasion to explain away if a kiss isn't well-received. And today is another holiday, and at that a holiday with a built-in excuse for kissing someone who is Irish or who you can convince yourself is Irish when you want to kiss badly enough.

"I suppose I stepped into that and did make myself a leprechaun." She smiles what she hopes is a sly smile of the well-received and says, "Kiss me, I'm Irish."

He obliges.

xx Six xx

After a handful of kisses in the past month, they each feel exhilarated and eager. They also each feel like they're rushing, absurdly overlooking the seven years of togetherness that came before New Year's and those few weeks. They do not, however, broach the subject out loud and come to appreciate their common thinking, their common passion, because they've had seven years of practice not discussing such things.

Then his mother dies and he finds Samantha in starlight, and their focus shifts from each other to a larger, messier opus of family, tragedy, and conspiracy. They don't have time to put that story into context before they find themselves in California for a succession of three cases, none of which allow them time to go back to D.C. In California they're a team that shares almost every meal together, drives endlessly together, argues together, and confronts voodoo, would-be werewolves, and rogue game programmers together, but this rush of crazed activity and the lingering swirls of confusion around his family coated them each with a thick, protective, professional veneer.

They don't touch one another in California except for the briefest of mostly inadvertent brushes.

It is only on the eventual flight home that either of them really think about what they left there. They both independently realize it, even before he indiscreetly takes her hand and holds it for the entire bumpy descent when pointed looks and curt retorts established years ago that she is over her irrational fear of rough landings.

At the airport they stop wheeling their luggage at a point where they need to part to head to their separate destinations. They don't often stop at this point and merely continue on their own paths with traded goodbyes, anxious to get home. When they do stop, it's to hand over files or plan logistics related to an ongoing case. Today they stop because they don't want to leave each other.

It appears that their veneers, in the process of fading in flight over the country, may have melted a bit into each other.

He asks, "When will we meet up again?"

"Monday. As today is Saturday."

"Are you kidding me for April Fools' Day?" he asks, even though he knows she is not joking since she spoke in her in well-established "you are a dodo" voice. Since he had more than a few seconds of contact with her on the plane he's been having a hard time imagining the eternity to Monday.

She rolls her eyes even though Monday feels like a long way away to her too.

"Don't forget to change your clocks tonight for Daylight Savings Time," she reminds him. "You need to be on time on Monday since we need to both be there all day to make any kind of dent in the paperwork for all the cases we just finished up out there."

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"I'd hate for us to experience any lost time."

She rolls her eyes again at this reference to alien visitation theory, but it's in an abbreviated way once she sees his eyes darken. His eyes darkening scares her a little. It scares him a lot.

"We need to make up for lost time," he says, taking a tiny step toward her despite his fear in the turn he's taking. They're taking.

"Yes, lost time," she lamely parrots as she inches toward him.

"Yeah?" Moving closer.

"Yeah." Closer still.

They're now near enough to touch, which they do in a kiss.

It is the most wildly inappropriate kiss either of them has seen in an airport. And they are well-traveled, observant people. But they do not particularly care about the uncharacteristic display at the moment because their view of this kiss is especially good.

His hands creep under her suit jacket and trail up her shirt back. He had been holding his own suit jacket, but it is now on the floor. She presses one hand firmly against his back in a possessive press she knew would happen one day while her other hand explores the contours of his jaw.

One of her knees urges itself between his knees and presses against one of them. The pressure only abates when his knee makes one slow slide up and then back down a short length of her thigh.

After a time she grips the back of his shirt and uses it as leverage to move her head that much closer to his above her even though their lips are already profoundly acquainted. She discovers that the leverage increases her stability, which improves her range of motion to let her tilt her head more and allow her tongue to trail across the full length of his lower lip and find his tongue afterward.

Even with her tongue in his mouth for a delicious while, he manages to notice that with her head tilted like this her scarf-free neck is well exposed. So his mouth moves there, mumbling some non-words of affection on the way. She replies with non-words of her own as her head lolls farther sideways and her hands move to his shoulders and slide down his arms.

They've both been humming oddly, her hums sometimes punctuated with hushed yelps that make him hum more, louder.

When her hands reach his forearms, exposed because his shirt sleeves are rolled up, he draws away from her. He thinks she's trying to kindly but resolutely remove his roaming hands from her person. She was just trying to contact more skin.

The dampness he's left on her neck feels chilled as it evaporates. The paths she's trailed down his arms tingle in memory.

Her mouth forms a small "O" shape of surprise, because she cannot believe this happened. His lips are pursed, holding together the traces left of her, because he cannot believe this happened.

They depart in a daze, neither of them quite sure why they're heading to their separate homes instead of to one place together, but even that does not detectably dim their contented glow.

xx Seven xx

They sit across from one another in the basement office, each wondering when it would be acceptably late enough to leave.

As she reads she silently picks up pencils that drop on the floor after he absently and only sometimes successfully tosses them to pierce the ceiling. She's trying to work, has been for many days, and she wishes he would too instead of continuing to punish her with lack of interest, lack of focus, lack of effort. An overall lack.

He wishes that she would stop burying her head in files, finding so many seemingly manufactured reasons why the lab needs her upstairs frequently and at length, and failing at all forms of communication that don't involve raised eyebrows of irritation.

The air is thick with tension, confusion, and doubt.

Cancer Man took her on a drive to find a cure. In the process of this violation, he hardened her, which in turn hardened them.

Their veneers were back, though markedly less professionally built than before.

He gets up silently to go somewhere unnamed. She grabs his elbow abruptly as he passes. Her action surprises them both. 

She starts to say something but shakes her head back and forth instead because she has no words. He shakes his head too. They may be adrift but they at least have a common understanding that they are adrift. An unconscious effort to keep from being drifters cast forever out to sea is why they reach for each other quickly at the exact same moment and crash into one another.

Their frustrations manifest in angry passion.

He can't believe that she deserted him, lied to him so thoroughly and knowingly, especially after kissing him like that in the airport. He firmly grips her bicep. She bites his lip. He growls.

She can't believe that he couldn't have faith in her, trust that she took him seriously into account, especially after kissing him like that in the airport. She pushes into him and accidentally bangs his leg against the wooden desk. He slaps a hand back for balance and knocks over a picture frame. She tugs tightly on his tie.

They could both believe what they wanted to believe because neither one of them can easily trump their ingrained inner beliefs that they don't deserve to be kissed with abandon and that they do deserve to be left behind, to be suspected. For them, the head is louder than the heart.

The heart beats lub-dub as its valves open and close in the normal condition. Feeling the heart throbbing life is one thing, hearing its lub-dub beat is another. Ever since New Year's they've felt everything so acutely, felt so pulsating and alive even in the midst of deaths of villains like Pfaster and the vilified like his mother, but they still can't quite recognize, much less believe, his lub-dub beating Scul-ly and hers beating Mul-der. 

They shift in position over and over, though their mouths never part. Her teeth bang into his. His tongue briefly makes it hard for her to breathe. Her fingernails dig into his skin. The edge of his watch pokes sharply into her shoulder.

There is no room to speak. They don't know the words anyway. Although theirs is a relationship built on wordy debates, thoughtful commentary, and endless repartee, neither yet has the wherewithal or courage to notice that the sturdy linguistic bridge they've built between them extends to their hearts as well as their heads and won't fall under the weight of love.

Wordlessly, as they kiss with more ferocity than ever before, she presses her fists into his chest, and his hand pushes against the back of her head and uncomfortably pulls on her hair.

The phone rings, startling them apart.

As he moves back behind the desk, their arms stretch out to each other in prolonged contact like they're in The Creation of Adam until he answers the phone and has to grab a pencil to make a note.

Feeling his sting on her lips, her eyes cannot draw off him as his glance is down toward the desk. He hangs up suddenly and looks at her.

"I still need to go," he announces. "Violent Crime's asking for me again upstairs."

This time when he walks by her toward the door she reaches out and draws two fingers tenderly down his cheek and just over the corner of his reddened mouth, which responds by opening slightly. His hand feathers her aching shoulder and one finger slips somewhat accidentally along her neck just inside her collar.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay," he replies.

He departs.

They are not naïve enough to think that this eruption will quell all their doubts, or even not give rise to new ones, but it's a start.

And at least the office door was closed this time.

xx Eight xx

Late in the night, he lazily draws invisible circles and lines on the skin of her back while she lays next to him. He's making the heart chakra crop circle pattern he did not see in England while she was busy having visions back home. He cannot believe the epic failure of his trip led to something so extraordinary.

Some time ago she had woken up on his couch to the sound of him earnestly but unsuccessfully trying to quietly wash the mugs they'd dirtied that evening. Just awake, she sits on the couch, thinks, and listens to him for a while before she calls out, "Hi, I'm up."

"Sorry, Scully. I couldn't sleep." They had stopped talking on the couch well over an hour ago.

Again the only sounds in his darkened apartment are sloppy kitchen sounds. Eventually he walks out of the kitchen rubbing his wet hands on his pajama pants.

"I'm sorry," she says as he walks toward her. "I shouldn't have stopped us from talking."

He reaches the couch but does not sit down.

"Listen, Scul-"

"No, Mulder. No. Let me."

He looks at her thoughtfully. Her cheeks are flushed.

"You were right," she says as she stands up in front of him. "All roads do point to here." She fans her fingers out over his heart and holds them there briefly before drawing her hand up to his shoulder.

He acts in the reverse, placing his hand on her shoulder, so far below his when she's not in heels, and running it down until his palm is over her heart.

"There's been a lot of traveling on these roads," she continues.

"Yes. A lot."

"After so much traveling the only sensible thing to do is stop and rest, long and good."

"Yes."

"That's what beds are for."

Resting, however, isn't why they each practically run into his bedroom the moment one of them said aloud the word "bed."

Now in that bed, he leans over, radiant, reverent, and drops a kiss in the center of the chakra. His lips stick a little to her skin as he draws away, whether from the heat they built in the room or the unspoken desire on his lips to stay close forever he doesn't know and doesn't care.

She hadn't realized she'd been intermittently but consistently purring throughout his impromptu drawing session until its ending is punctuated by a kiss. Embarrassed but elated, she waits to see if he will start again. He does not. She wants to pull his hand back to her.

Her face is turned away from him, and her hand makes a swift blind reach. He's closer to her than she thinks. That is how she ends up punching him in the stomach after they made love.

"Oooof!"

"Oh Mulder, I'm so sorry!"

He somewhat doubts the sincerity of that apology based on the amount of laughter it's choked through.

"I'll do better next time, Scully, I swear."

She doesn't doubt his sincerity despite his words being peppered with laughter too. She does think he may be misguided.

"I'm not sure improvements are needed, Mulder."

"I've peaked? Does that mean there will be no next time? Did the world finally end?"

"I didn't say that," she intones as she rolls over and runs a soothing hand along his abdomen. "You know how I like repeated scientific study."

"I do. Know. That." He's having difficulty stringing together a sentence while her hand is still on him and she constellates his chest with soft kisses.

She look up at him with sober, sincere eyes. At this closeness they peruse each other frankly, wide-eyed and unabashed. He reaches for her, and she slides up.

"I see you now," she says as she runs her fingers along his cheekbone.

"And?"

"You're a vision."

"It's been a day for visions."

She nods. He presses the lightest of kisses to her forehead and whispers, "Let's see what else the night reveals."

"Yes," she repeats slowly and softly, until his mouth finally covers hers and absorbs the affirmations.

xx Nine xx

They're walking out of the Hollywood movie set hand-in-hand with a Bureau credit card to use for the evening when the lights outside the soundstage go out suddenly with a loud clank. They stop in their tracks.

"Did you plan that, Scully?"

"Of course not."

"Because if you wanted me alone in the dark, you just had to say so."

She doesn't say "Shut up, Mulder." It's clearly implied by her small groaning sigh. But just in case, since they are alone in the dark, after starring in a movie, sort of, she says "Shut up, Mulder" aloud and leans into him for a kiss.

He has no trouble not talking for some amount of time neither of them could quantify if asked.

Suddenly there's a boom and a hiss followed by the lights all snapping back on. They startle apart.

They look at one another for a brief silent moment before she says, "You're wearing me."

"You are too far away from me and too fully clothed for that to be possible."

In reply she smiles and mimes a rub of her mouth with the back of her hand. In the dark he came to be wearing more lipstick than she now is. He mimics her with a real smile and a real rub.

"You've marked me, Scully."

"Yes, sorry, I did."

"Here, yes," he says as he waves his lipsticked hand around, "but I mean really marked."

"Marked?"

"You know, _marked_. Inside." He is aware that he sounds very stupid.

"Inside?" She is aware that she sounds very stupid.

"Inside. You know, _inside_."

"Yes," she says. "I think I know."

"You think?"

"I know."

"I know too."

"I don't think this is new news, Mulder."

"No. It started a long time ago."

"Yes, but it still feels a bit new, doesn't it?"

He nods.

"Happy premiere, Scully."

"Happy premiere, Mulder."

xx Ten xx

He's sitting on her couch looking down at a box in his hands and calls out to her in the kitchen, "I can't believe you actually rented _Steel Magnolias_ , Scully."

"I remind you that it was your suggestion after _Caddyshack_ , Mulder."

"Hardly!"

"You at least knew _Steel Magnolias_ was a possibility."

"I didn't think it was a real possibility."

"You didn't have to come over at all, you know."

They were leaving the office like any other day when it struck her that she hadn't felt the low burn of his stubble against her face for a number of days. She turns away from him at the thought, knowing she's blushing and knowing he would notice. She's sensed how attuned he is to her today.

All day he's been touching her. He didn't do it consciously at first, but as the day went on, he kept unnecessarily punctuating observations with soft taps on her shoulder and drawing her attention with not just the call of her name but with light brushes along her suit-encased forearm. He aches at the thought of it being days since he's felt her skin.

With her head still turned away from him, she says, "Come over tonight." The sentiment didn't come out as the question she meant it to be, but he doesn't seem to care.

"Okay," he says without hesitation. "I'll bring dinner. One hour."

She doesn't need to transfer the take-out food he brought to proper plates to be eaten with proper silverware, but of course she does because she is who she is. She sits next to him on the couch and hands him a plate.

They pick at their food, eating little and not speaking at all.

Eventually he sets his plate on the coffee table and trades it for the video box he'd set there. He holds the box out to her and says, "I admit I'm not all that hungry, Scully."

"I admit I'm not all that interested in watching this movie, Mulder."

She inches up and bends forward to set her plate next to his on the table and to put the box down there too. As she's leaned over, his hand moves to rest against the small of her back.

As she moves back toward the couch, into his touch, his hand slides behind her to her waist. Her hand in turn snakes across him to rest on his far hip. Her head falls to rest alight on his shoulder.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," she returns.

He starts to sprinkle kisses on the top of her head, the only part of her his lips can currently easily reach, and whispers, "My heart is racing, Scully."

She moves her hand from his hip to rest over his heart.

"Yes," she says. "I feel it."

He hasn't stopped dropping down kisses.

"I feel it too, Mulder. My heart's racing too."

"Wow."

She tilts her head up at him. Their eyes lock. They are heavy-lidded, weighed down with a lifetime's worth of love.

They move toward one another until their lips touch and their hands begin to move.

They kiss slowly, almost experimentally as if they have never met lips before. The deepness and gentleness rocks them to and fro in a prolonged sequence of heartbeats.

They feel the world is never-ending as they hear: Mul-der, Scul-ly.

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine the scarf Mulder gives Scully as the one she wears to the train station to meet him in Trust No 1. The fused coins are of course the ones Scully got in the Dreamland time warp. The leprechaun head is made up and just something weird I thought Mulder would pay too much for in some sort of goofily covert transaction.
> 
> The season 7 episodes after Millennium lack dates and have confusing timing, except part of Chimera being on Easter, so I timed the episodes the way I wanted to for the story even though it made Mulder and Scully have some really packed bad stretches of time. But it gets even worse for them once Requiem hits, so I figure what I did is okay.


End file.
